Trailer for “Street Dogs of South Central” Dramamentary

This is a trailer for a documentary about street dogs in Los Angeles that follows the lives of one particular dog and her puppies over a three-year period (reported here). It aired on Animal Planet in February but I only just heard about it so haven’t seen the full version.

Although it is clearly edited for drama and has been called a "dramamentary" it is aimed at raising "some awareness for the plight of stray dogs" and probably contains interesting detail. For example, one of the film-makers felt there was covert ownership by people who would feed a stray but could not afford medical care or a license so would not admit to actually owning the dog which was therefore allowed to run around freely.

The makers of the film are not entirely happy with Animal Planet’s re-editing and are showing their own original version at a festival in Hollywood. On-line reaction has included some anger at the film-makers for not intervening to help the dogs and this wildlife film-making approach of theirs used on our beloved dogs-in-need is clearly a touchy subject for many. However, if they had intervened they would have ended-up with another documentary about “saving” strays and not the more original film that they have managed to produce.

My biggest concern with this program is that it shows the western context of a city in the USA (the makers say they could have made it in any US city) which will tell only part of the worldwide stray dog story but will be shown worldwide. It worries me slightly that the film will effectively just add to the westernization of attitudes to unowned dogs that I have complained about before in this blog (see here and here, for example).

The answer to this is that somebody should make another version following unowned village dogs, for example, in Thailand. Perhaps I will, and I’m sure it would actually be an even more interesting story but it would also be less dramatic and therefore probably less viewed.